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Transit-friendly planning is a land use planning and design technique that encourages and supports the use of mass transit. Generally (but not always), the transit-friendly planning implies the presence of fixed transit infrastructure (usually a rail station, but could also include a bus depot or ferry terminal), as opposed to impermanent facilities like a bus stop or park-and-ride lot.
Transit-friendly planning allows the community's transit facility to serve as the centerpiece around which the community is arranged, with buildings, roads, and sidewalks oriented to facilitate transit access. The transit facility is regarded as the "front door" to the community, with jobs, shopping, services, and housing positioned near the facility so as to be within easy walking or bicycling distance for people arriving or departing by transit. Surrounding residential areas are connected to the transit facility by a grid-type street network that offers multiple access paths, with the transit facility clearly visible at the end of the major streets. Streets should be pedestrian and bicycle friendly - relatively narrow, with continuous sidewalks and bike lanes, and on-street parking. Higher-density housing is located close to the transit facility in order to place more people within walking distance of transit.
Since transit-friendly planning seeks to maximize the number of people who access the transit facility by non-motorized means, its characteristics have much in common as the more general planning techniques like "traditional neighborhood development" and "New Urbanism," which refer to a type of development characterized by smaller-lot residential areas, mixed uses, well-connected street networks, and pedestrian-friendly streets, sidewalks, and building design.
In fact, transit-friendly planning is, in many ways, just a new name for an old design. That "old" design was, at one time, the standard community development pattern. In the era before highways, mass automobile ownership, and suburbanization of jobs and retail, it was natural to develop activities close to the transportation nodes in the community. Even early suburbanization was transit-friendly - these early suburbs were shaped by the dominant mode of transportation at the time, commuter railroads. The train station served as the entry and departure portal for community residents on their way to jobs and shopping in the city; thus, the local businesses and services clustered near the train station because it made good business sense for their locations to be convenient to their potential customers. Furthermore, housing was also located near train stations so that residents could walk to it easily, avoiding the need for each household member to use a car every day.
In contrast to days past, when transit-oriented development was largely a private-sector phenomenon spurred by privately-owned and operated passenger railroads, transit-friendly planning and development today almost always depends on cooperation between the public and private sectors, as illustrated in the case studies. Integrating a transit facility into its surrounding community and allowing it to serve as a catalyst for development in the station area depends both on private developers and on the public transit agency, as well as on local governments that control land use and zoning. These entities must work together toward a common vision if transit-friendly planning is to succeed.